Abstract

My subject is two fragments of rhetorical commentary that appear both in an anonymous manuscript collection of quotations ‘From Longinus’ and in Photius' Bibliotheca. My purpose is to clarify some observations that have been made on them by modern scholars and thus offer a correction or two. The collection of separate quotations labelled κ τν Λογγνου in Laurentianus 24, Plut. 58, was given its title by a later hand different from that of the writer of the original. The grounds for that mistaken heading were that the name ‘Longinus’ appears in the second of the fragments. Aristotle and Theophrastus, however, are cited in other quotations, and most are anonymous, with as yet no particular resemblance found to wording in other rhetorical literature. Each begins with the word τι. All are general remarks on subjects such as rhetorical tropes, style, and different types of speeches. They are, in effect, scholia without a text.